A report by Broadpoint.AmTech analyst Benjamin Schachter indicates that both firms seem to be increasingly emphasizing sales and marketing hires over research and development ones. At Google, sales and marketing openings are down 39 percent compared to a year ago, while engineering and R&D openings are down 60 percent (Overall, openings are down 54 percent). And, at Yahoo, Schachter says that engineering and R&D openings are down 58 percent, while sales and marketing listings are down 28 percent (Overall, job postings are down 47 percent).

Both companies continue to have substantially more openings for engineers than for sales and marketing folks. Still, the results are surprising, considering that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has given the strong impression that she wants to emphasize engineering hires ("We had a lot of people running around telling engineers what to do but nobody is f—-ing doing anything," she famously said during the company's earnings call in April).